Friday, January 31, 2014

Process Excellence Survey Shows a Radical Shift Emerginig

The Process Excellence Network (PEX) released it's 3rd Biennial PEX report on the "State of the Process Industry" which highlighted trends and success factors in business process excellence and there were early indications of a radical shift occurring. That shift is accentuated by three major trends. One is a shift towards customer satisfaction, another is sustaining growth and lastly making change a core competency.

About the Survey:

The survey, sponsored by Open Text, K2 and Kimberly-Clark Professional, was across over 25 industries on a world wide basis. While the majority of the responses were from the US and Europe (70%), there was enough "rest of the world" representation (30%) to be "on the mark". Though the majority of the respondents were process professionals, there was enough executive participation to offset any process bias. I would highly recommend that you read the survey yours self by contacting PEX at info@pexnetwork.com or website http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/

Customer Satisfaction:

This was an interesting finding; 37.5% of business executives defined their aim of their process programs as to "improve customer satisfaction through a quality experience as well as efficiency". The heterogeneous customer base that businesses have are demanding a better experience or they will take their business elsewhere. Processes represent the face of the business and had better allow a great experience with customization by customer.

Sustaining Growth:

Sustaining growth was cited as one of the top 3 business challenges in the years ahead by 47.7% of the executives responding. This means that processes that capture new business as fast and easy as possible will be those that win the race. This is especially true in industries that are constrained by onerous governance, heavy competition or restrictive business models.

Managing Change:

Executives also pointed to that ability to change often and rapidly was becoming a core competency. In fact, highly successful organizations are leveraging process to wrap slow legacy processes to enable evolutionary transformations as they wrestle with business models and change rates.

Net; Net:

In today's global and hyper competitive economy cost cutting is a base on top of which raising revenue and ability to change rapidly become tomorrow's business core competencies. Processes are not just a necessary evil any more, they are at the front lines of differentiation and innovation. Watch this space closely.